


we move lightly

by brynnmclean (ilfirin_estel)



Series: rise at dawn 'verse [2]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Self-Indulgent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-20
Updated: 2016-09-20
Packaged: 2018-08-16 04:19:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8086855
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilfirin_estel/pseuds/brynnmclean
Summary: When Luke smiles at her, the corners of his eyes crinkle with laugh lines.  Something about that feels like a gift.
An interlude.  A couple of moments between Luke and Rey.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This has been sitting on my hard drive for a while and it is basically me rolling in feelings. It feels like it fits in more with that second chapter of [rise at dawn](http://archiveofourown.org/works/5805568/chapters/13555045) than anything else I'm planning on writing, but I didn't want to tack it on as a third chapter there, so... here we are. For what it is worth, I hope y'all like it.
> 
> The title is from Dustin O'Halloran's [song,](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BYe-UfzgPk) which is one of the songs I listen to when I try to convey the tentative affection I see in these two desert babies.

It rains in the evening, clouds rolling in dark and grey, robbing Rey of the spill of sunlight across the vast ocean. The drum tattoo of the water falling startles her with how long it lasts. Rey opens the door to the little stone house and insists on sitting in the doorway to watch the storm pass—and when Luke smiles at her, the corners of his eyes crinkle with laugh lines. Something about that feels like a gift. Wonder still keeps Rey warm, despite the chill of the air.

“I’m from a desert planet,” she tells Luke, remembering how quickly the rare rainstorm would be sucked greedily down into the ground—there and gone in just an instant. “Jakku.”

Luke drapes his cloak over her shoulders before he sinks down opposite her. His feet bump into hers because there isn’t much space, but she doesn’t mind it, the proximity. It feels companionable, comforting. 

“I’m from Tatooine,” he says, then laughs like a distant rumble of thunder. “I’ve never gotten used to how much it rains on other planets. And the ocean… It’s just incredible.”

“So much water,” Rey says, an echo of a thought she senses from him, a kinship over childhoods spent in oceans of sand, rough and clinging on dry, cracked skin. She pulls Luke’s cloak tighter around herself and breathes deep the rich, foreign smell of freshly watered grass and soil.

Luke closes his eyes and tips his head back against the door jamb, murmuring words that settle inside the quiet of the moment. Rey catches pieces of it and tries to fit the sounds together into something recognizable, but they are as fluid and fleeting as water caught in her hands, slipping through her fingers. Questions burn on her tongue— _what did you say, will you please tell me, tell me everything_ —but she swallows them back, throat dry.

Luke’s mouth curves upward, and when he looks at her his gaze is knowing.

“It’s a prayer of gratitude, something my aunt used to say when the rare rain came.” Luke’s smile fades as he looks away, watches the rain splash into puddles on the stone pathways. “She died long ago.”

Rey wishes she had something more to offer him besides _sorry._ What it must have been like to have had years with family before losing them… She tentatively brushes against the bond between them and feels Luke’s understanding, gentle and soothing, the relief of cool water in her parched mouth.

“I know you’re curious,” Luke says after a moment, catching what she didn’t intend to project. “I know you have a lot of questions.”

Rey flushes at the thought of how transparent she must seem to him. “Can you see all that through—” She pushes a little harder at the connection, unsure if it has a proper name.

It’s not like the awareness she had of Kylo Ren, how she shoved against his attempts to enter her mind and so she tumbled into his. It doesn’t feel like an exploitative tearing—at least, not on her end. No, no—what if she is hurting him? The very thought freezes down her spine and she recoils hastily back into herself.

“Sorry,” she blurts out, but Luke just shakes his head.

“You haven’t hurt me.” The reassurance is paired with a weariness she can see, but not touch. She tastes guilt on her tongue, sharp and sudden.

Luke rests his hands on his knees, his metal prosthetic twitching reflexively. “I’m the one who should be sorry, Rey. I’ve spent so many years here alone that I’m out of practice with shielding around other people. And sometimes this—” The connection flares with warmth and light between them, and Rey can’t help but smile just a little at the feeling. “—this type of bond can happen between Force sensitive people. Especially if they’re both open to the possibility. But I won’t push you,” Luke adds, deadly serious now. “Or hurt you intentionally. I can teach you how to close your mind to it and to other intrusions.”

“I thought you weren’t going to teach me.” Rey wants to cram those words back into her mouth as soon as she says them because she does want to learn—and she doesn’t like the shadows that cross Luke’s face, the dark grief roiling behind the veil he pulls over his side of the bond.

“You should know this even if we don’t go further in any training. It’s important.” Luke swallows, his voice gravel-rough when he adds, “I want you to be safe, Rey.” 

He doesn’t say it, but she hears it anyway: _I want to keep you safe._ She doesn’t know what to do with that—that protectiveness. How it must be rooted in something from the past, something he has been careful not to let her see. Neither of them can change the fourteen years she spent alone. And she has so many questions, so many stories she wants him to tell her, but she’s afraid. Not of learning the ways of the Force from him, not really that, just—she wants to have the right words, the right footing as she makes her careful way to him.

It feels like the first time she dared to climb inside the downed Star Destroyer in the desert, how each step felt like it would stop her heart. Each breath in her lungs was heavy with the knowledge that she could slip and fall and no one would be there to catch her. She is afraid to trust the ground beneath her, afraid that it will break beneath her weight. What if she says the wrong thing? What if she chases him away and this—this newness, this protectiveness, this bond crumbles into dust, easily stolen away by the wind?

In some ways, it was easier to be alone—there was no one to lose. But she can’t go back to that, she won’t. She wants to keep every person, every friend she has gained. She can handle the fear of losing them because at least now she has people she can lose. It’s better, the having.

So she steels herself and dares to test the foundations just a little. “Will you tell me about Tatooine?”

Luke nods—and Rey feels something give way, but it’s a bend, not a break.

-

The stories told around the scrap tables of Jakku never mentioned that Luke Skywalker, the Last Jedi, had a childhood. The only pieces about his origin that survived over the years were that he came from the Outer Rim, from nothing and nowhere, proof that anyone could have destiny rushing beneath their skin.

Luke tells Rey about the canyons, the towns and spaceports—and the people who raised him, an aunt named Beru and an uncle named Owen. Gentle and stern and loving people that made up their little family. Luke tells Rey how they carved a good life out of the ground by farming for water, bartering for machinery and food. There were good seasons and there were bad seasons; there was plenty and there was drought. Rey is surprised how much that resonates with her.

“I was always dreaming about other places,” Luke says at one point, rueful. “Wishing I was somewhere else. My uncle told me my father had been the best fighter pilot in the galaxy, so I spent most of my free time learning all I could about speeders and starships, dreaming about flying far away.”

“I did that, too,” Rey says, a lump in her throat. “I learned how to fly from computer simulations off an old Y-wing, and I had an old Rebel pilot helmet. I used to dream about flying missions.” And then, with a flare of pride, she adds, “I’m good at mechanics, too. Back on Jakku, I reconfigured an old speeder bike for transportation.” She holds her hands out to him to show the scars all along her palms, all the burns and cuts from that job and all the rest. “It took awhile, but I made it work. It’s—” Oh, she aches suddenly, thinking of it. “It’s probably been torn apart for scrap now.” She hopes it sold for a good amount of food portions. “I want to go back one day to get a few things.”

Luke nods slowly. “I went back to Tatooine after the destruction of the first Death Star. There wasn’t much left from my aunt and uncle’s house, but it was good to go. To remember.”

“Have you gone back more than once?” The possibility of going back to Jakku, of going there and then leaving and then going back—of not being tied down to one planet, except as a place Rey lived on once, a place she is _from,_ but not always part of… It’s still a foreign concept.

Luke laughs, just a little. “Yes. Not often. Every time I went, something would happen, and I would think ‘maybe I am destined to die on this rock.’ Han joked about it once when we were in a bad situation, how it would be convenient.”

Han. The sharp edge of grief bites into her, but it leaves hunger in its wake. “Will you tell me that story?”

He does—and she’s heard bits and pieces of it before from the mouths of others, but it never seemed real then. The way he tells it is different, more believable because she can relate to parts of it now. To having a plan that goes awry, to making it up as you go, trusting the light inside you, the Force guiding your path.

-

They talk until the storm passes and the sky turns into a patchwork scattering of stars in black. The temperature drops too, the air somehow both heavy and cold. Rey shivers in spite of the cloak around her and Luke climbs to his feet and ushers her back inside to the hearth. The fire has died down to orange and black embers, but he builds it back up and shuts the door to the house, tells her to stay the night.

“The stairs to your ship will be steep and slippery,” he says as he heats water for a drink—some type of tea, she thinks. It smells green. “It would be best to wait until morning.”

She yawns when she gives her assent, exhaustion seeping into her bones. She pushes gratitude across the Force bond just for a moment—she hadn’t been relishing the idea of climbing her way back down to the Falcon in the cold and the dark. Warmth radiates from the little fire and from the bond. “I could sleep right here where I sit,” she murmurs, eyelids heavy. It’s just a comment, but Luke abandons his tea to get her blankets and a lumpy pillow.

“Sleep on the pallet,” he insists despite her sleepy protests. “No, go on. You will rest easier than I will. I am old,” he adds, self-deprecating. “I will be awake half the night as it is.”

There’s a part of her that clings to the hard-learned instinct of Jakku, searching for a catch to anything offered to her. Everything has cost something. But Luke lets her in so she can see the truth behind his words, the desire to protect, to take care of her. _Why,_ she can’t help but send back, and he shakes his head.

“Just let me,” he says aloud.

“Okay.” She asked him for stories today, she thinks as she unties the knots from her hair. Maybe she can pay him back in this way, maybe this makes them even for now. 

She settles in for the night to the quiet sounds of him rummaging in his kitchen and singing a song she now recognizes as being from Tatooine.


End file.
